Death by 280 Characters: How to Avoid Viral Social Media Blunders

&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;It takes minimal time for an ill-conceived post to go viral&comma; so don't leave your company's social media strategy to chance&period; Follow these tips to implement better processes&comma; conduct smarter training and hire the right people&period;&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;

The McDonald’s Twitter account hit a major bump in the road as it closed out 2017&period; On Black Friday&comma; the fast food giant presumably wanted to tweet out a promo deal to shoppers but instead tweeted this&colon; “Black Friday &ast;&ast;&ast;&ast;Need copy and link&ast;&ast;&ast;&ast;&period;”

How does this sort of social media blunder happen at such a large and successful organization&quest; Even with sophisticated software and multiple departments involved&comma; companies still manage to miss obvious mistakes because of the rapid pace of social channels&period; The desire to be the first and funniest overtakes reasonable caution&comma; leading to well-meaning missteps such as this one from New Zealand in which police unintentionally made light of car crash fatalities&period;

Now that social media has become the face of the company to many consumers&comma; brands must rethink how they handle their social accounts&period; The problem doesn’t boil down to personnel alone&comma; though&period; A combination of better training&comma; processes and personnel can prevent unwanted social media attention&period;

Building a better social strategy&period;

Social accounts play an outsized role in establishing the public identities of brands&period; Companies must be cautious when selecting people to represent them online&comma; but they also must tread carefully when training personnel and building the processes that guide social media communications&period;

By focusing on these three areas&comma; smart companies can create a social media response culture that presents the best face of the brand&colon;

1&period; Establish a clear social media process&period;

Follow the chain of creation&comma; approval&comma; distribution and analysis on every social media account to identify potential problem areas&period; Investigate your reactive content &lpar;including customer care&rpar;&comma; as well as your proactive content &lpar;marketing posts&rpar;&period; How does a potential tweet or post make its way from internal team to agency to approval to published&quest; This is particularly important for staged social -- “set and forget” software makes it easy to assume everything is fine&comma; but problems can still occur&period;

Develop concrete policies to interrupt regular social media schedules when necessary&period; If tragedy strikes -- the death of a public figure&comma; for instance -- treat the event with respect&comma; and don’t attempt to latch on inappropriately&period; Cinnabon learned this lesson the hard way&period; Following the death of Carrie Fisher&comma; the company encountered fan backlash after posting a picture of Princess Leia with cinnamon rolls in place of her iconic hairstyle&period;

Design processes that also include PR disaster responses&period; If your company wakes up to a massive blunder&comma; know who will be responsible for approving response content&period; Southwest Airlines got it right earlier this year&comma; using Facebook Live to keep customers updated during a major service blackout&period; Southwest even involved its COO&comma; adding weight to the response and making customers feel like their problems were heard&period;

According to Hootsuite&comma; American social media spending is expected to reach more than &dollar;17 billion by 2019&period; Use that budget to design easy-to-follow processes that will mitigate disasters&period;

2&period; Hire personnel who won’t burn you&period;

Social media skills are easier to learn than the subtleties of company culture&period; Instead of hunting for social media experts at prices up to &dollar;74&comma;000 per year&comma; according to PayScale&comma; identify people who understand your brand best&period; Then&comma; teach that group to use Twitter&period;

These individuals should have strong judgment&comma; people skills and empathy&period; When brands pull together a team of young and trendy people to run their social media accounts&comma; they fail to remember that those people will do more than craft humorous tweets -- they’ll also field all customer questions&period; If team members lack the appropriate answers&comma; they’ll bog down production by asking other employees&period; And responding without checking is even worse&comma; as it can lead to costly mistakes&period;

Esteban Kolsky&comma; social media expert and founder of thinkJar&comma; spoke with me when I conducted research for my book “Hug Your Haters&period;” He believes skilled customer relations specialists make better social representatives than people who have a background in social media&period; Put people who have been on the front lines of customer support in your social media room to keep responses timely and on message&period;

3&period; Provide employees with extensive training&period;

Use practice exercises to train social media employees for every social media scenario&period; You might have workers participate in desktop walkthroughs to go through the motions when things are good&comma; which will help them be prepared should the tides shift&period;

Per eMarketer&comma; nearly 89 percent of American companies with 100 or more employees rely on social media for marketing&period; Don’t leave the teams responsible for these channels unprepared to handle adversity&period; Talk through real-world examples of other companies that have responded to social media missteps in the right way as well as the wrong way&period;

McDonald’s&comma; for example&comma; handled its Black Friday blunder perfectly&period; The company left the tweet up&comma; adding a response that showed it wasn’t afraid to poke fun at the gaffe&colon; “When you tweet before your first cup of McCafé&mldr; Nothing comes before coffee&period;” Combined with an image from its recent McCafé television commercial&comma; the response felt genuine and funny&comma; transforming a misstep into a self-aware bit of humor&period;